Nelson, returning from his Victory of the Nile, and inflated with pride and political rancor, annulled the terms which Cardinal Ruffo had accepted--doing so over the Cardinal’s protest, be it said to his honor. The republican garrisons of the castles were delivered by Nelson to the vengeance of their enemies. As to Prince Carraccioli, Nelson himself took charge of his case. The gray-haired man, who had honorably served his country for forty years, was brought on board the English vessel, with hands tied behind him, at nine o’clock in the forenoon. By ten his trial had begun; in two hours it was ended. Sentenced to death immediately, he was, at five o’clock in the afternoon of the same day, hanged at the yard-arm, his body cut down at sunset, and thrown into the sea. In vain the old man had pleaded that the president of the court-martial was his personal enemy. In vain he had asked for time, a rehearing, a chance to get witnesses. Nelson was unrelenting. Then the victim of this cold-blooded murder begged that he might be shot. “I am an old man, sir. I leave no family to grieve for me, and therefore cannot be supposed to be very anxious to live; but the disgrace of being hanged is dreadful to me!” And again Nelson refused all concession. Lady Hamilton, Nelson’s mistress, looked on with unconcealed satisfaction as the prince-republican was choked to death with a rope; and if ever Nelson felt a pang because of his shocking inhumanity, it has escaped the record. Who has not had his ears deafened by royalist diatribes concerning the murder of the Duke d’Enghien? And how silent are the same royalist authors concerning the murder of the Prince Carraccioli! The closer the facts of history are studied and compared, the less certain the reader will be that Napoleon Bonaparte was a whit worse in any respect than the average public man of his time. * * * * * From the newspapers which Napoleon read at Alexandria during the night of July 25, 1799, he first learned the full extent of the disasters which had befallen France in his absence. “Great heavens, the fools have lost Italy! I must return to France!” In the East his work was done. He had crushed organized resistance. From the cataracts to the sea all was quietude. True, he had not conquered Syria, but he had broken Djezzar’s strength, and destroyed the relieving army of Turks. What remained? What more had he to do in Egypt? Was he, when France was in such dire distress, to stay at Cairo running the newspaper, making pencils, supervising canals and schools, and dawdling along the Nile as local governor? In France itself there was no division of sentiment on the subject. All felt that the best soldier of the Republic was needed at home. “Where is Bonaparte?” was the cry throughout the country. The need for him was felt in Italy as well as France, on the Rhine as on the Seine.